Макс Вайнрайх: Жизнь и вклад в изучение идиша

American linguist

Max Weinreich ( Maks Vaynraych; Мейер Лазаревич Вайнрайх, Meyer Lazarevich Vaynraykh; 22 April 1894 – 29 January 1969) was a Russian American Jewish linguist, specializing in sociolinguistics and Yiddish, and the father of the linguist Uriel Weinreich, who, a sociolinguistic innovator, edited the Modern Yiddish English English Yiddish Dictionary. He is known for increasing language awareness of Yiddish as a standardized language; he popularised the phrase "A language is a dialect with an army and navy".

Weinreich began his studies in a German school in Goldingen (modern Kuldīga), transferring to the gymnasium in Libau (modern Liepāja) after four years. He then lived in Daugavpils and Łódź. Between 1909 and 1912, he resided in Saint Petersburg, where he attended I. G. Eizenbet's private Jewish gymnasium for boys. He was raised in a German speaking family but became fascinated with Yiddish. In the early 1920s, Weinreich lived in Germany and pursued studies in linguistics at the universities of Berlin and Marburg. In 1923, under the direction of German linguist de in Marburg, he completed his dissertation, entitled "Studien zur Geschichte und dialektischen Gliederung der jiddischen Sprache" (Studies in the History and Dialect Distribution of the Yiddish language). The dissertation was published in 1993 under the title Geschichte der jiddischen Sprachforschung ("History of Yiddish Linguistics"). In 1925, Weinreich was the cofounder, along with Nochum Shtif, Elias Tcherikower, and Zalman Reisen, of YIVO (originally called the Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institut — Yiddish Scientific Institute). Although the institute was officially founded during a conference in Berlin in August 1925, the centre of its activities was in Wilno (now Vilnius, Lithuania), which eventually became its official headquarters as well. YIVO's first office in Wilno was in a room in Weinreich's apartment.